"Just wanted to thank you for a great time @ GenCon.
The wife and I purchased Fluxx earlier in the year on a whim
and fell in love with. Now we take it every where with us. My
wife's favorite event @ Gen-con (she's not a big gamer) was playing
Zombie Fluxx @ Every-one
vs Andy and discovering Treehouse."
-- email from Christopher W

This week we've
started accepting Pre-Orders
for Zombie Fluxx! We submitted the card artwork just before
GenCon and last week we completed
the rulesheet so now we're just waiting for our card printers
in Texas to make the decks and deliver them to our warehouse.
As soon as they do, we'll be shipping them out to everyone who
pre-ordered a copy, so if you want to be the first on your block
to have Zombie Fluxx, place your pre-order now! It's on schedule
to ship in early October!

Last Friday I spent the day
riding roller coasters at HersheyPark with Robin.
I love thrill rides -- I've yet to find a ride at any amusement
park that I'd be afraid to go on -- but I haven't been indulging
in this as much as I used to. Over the years, as Kristin's perfume
allergy has gotten worse, it's been less fun for her... much
as Kristin
loves roller coasters too, they aren't so great when you've
got a throbbing migraine. Meanwhile, just as Kristin
found herself getting a headache from the other park attendees,
Alison
found herself getting headaches from being jostled around by
the rides. Consequently, I haven't been doing much coastering
in recent years.

But then this
year at Origins, I was given a pair of complimentary passes
to HersheyPark, by a fan who works for the company. (He said
that every year they give him more employee passes than he can
use, and offered his extras to me -- thanks again, dude!)

Since
neither of my two closest friends really wanted to go coastering
with me, I asked my third closest friend if she wanted to be
my new Coaster Buddy. Since Robin
also loves thrill rides and has a husband who refuses to go on
them, she loved the idea, and on Friday we had a grand time together
at the park.

It was fascinating to see how much the park had changed since
my last visit. Of course there were the newest coasters, which
are quite excellent; I was very impressed by their latest addition,
Storm Runner, although I had to give top marks to the slightly
older Great Bear. But some changes didn't impress me as much...
I could have done without the singing cows that were added in
the most recent update to the Hershey's Chocolate World ride,
and I was shocked and disappointed by the disappearance of their
really cool giant double ferris wheel. It also really bothered
us that Hershey's Ice Cream isn't available in the park anymore,
having been replaced by Turkey Hill and Cold Stone Creamery.
But most of my favorite stuff was still there, and I had a great
time as always visiting one of my very favorite amusement parks.

We went on the last weekday of the season, and since most
of the schools around here are already back in session, this
proved to be an excellent day from a crowdedness standpoint.
The lines were wonderfully short! This is ironic however, since
it derailed a playtesting agenda I'd brought along.

You
see, I've just
invented a new Treehouse
game, which I'm calling Twin
Win, and this game was conceived as an Icehouse game you
could play while standing in line. Moreover, it was inspired
by the planning for this trip! And yet, since we never had to
wait very long in a line, it never seemed like it was worth trying
to set up the experiment. (We
did play it once, but that was while we were sitting at a
table having ice cream.)

Anyway, even though I haven't actually tried this game while
standing in a line, I'm confident enough in the way it plays
to be ready to release the rules. So check it out, I hope you
like it. However, don't play this yet if you haven't finished
testing out and voting on the new games in the current Icehouse
Game Design Contest. The deadline for voting is September
17th, so whatever energy you have for trying out new Icehouse
games should be devoted to that before you try out Twin
Win.

Thanks
for reading, and have a great fortnight!

Ice-Henge games are go! At first, it seemed that Paizo's
"Anthology Board Game Library Agreement" (which provides
their guidelines for designing new games for the Stonehenge
system) would prevent their sanctioning of a Stonehenge game
which made use of Icehouse
pieces. But after careful deliberations, they've decided to extend
a singular exception to our pyramids! "For the purposes
of this agreement," Mike writes on their messageboard,
"Icehouse pieces are deemed 'generic and common,' even though
they most assuredly aren't in any other way." Yay! I look
forward to seeing what Ice-Henge games are created!

I've been having more troubles
with Apple's iMovie software. This week I discovered a really
nasty bug in the version I'm using: when you close your project
and it asks if you want to save changes, and you say yes, it
doesn't do it! Ack!

"Since 1776, the United States has accumulated a national
debt of $9 Trillion, over HALF of which was incurred when a Bush
was on watch! WHAT a family legacy! If you throw in Reagan, fully
70% of the National Debt was created under just three Republican
Presidents! What's more, they didn't even TRY to restrain spending!
Out of 19 submitted budgets, only TWO were balanced! So here's
my question, dude... Where did the myth of GOP fiscal responsibility
come from?" -- Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury,
9/2/7